Home Forums SBS replacement

After many years of faithful service my SBS 2008 server is starting to go down with almost every update from Microsoft. I may try disabling the update service but I don't really like that idea as it makes the system more vulnerable to viruses. I can either rebuild it or reinstall it or upgrade to a new version. On the other hand, I could try an SBS replacement from the Linux world, such as ClearOS or Ubuntu system. Any thoughts from our server gurus?

What do you mean by going down? Maybe it's time to upgrade to SBS 2011 with a hardware refresh?

I like to do so every 3-5 years. How long has it been since you got the SBS 2008 server?

It just locks up - won't get past Ctl-Alt-Del. Clients lose connection then we restart. Seems to happen with update notices. Got it in 2008! It's gone through one hardware refresh, a bare metal restore, currently on dual Xeon 5405 at 2GHz with 8Gb RAM.

It might be time for SBS 2011. Maybe get a fresh start this time with a full reformat/reinstall instead of a bare metal restore. This will be time consuming. Maybe use a different HyperVisor. Or just get a new server entirely. The new LGA2011 socket just came out too and it's been 4 years. Then again I always try to find an excuse to upgrade Sounds like you're having a lot of issues. It may not be worth your time troubleshooting and trying to fix each one. If possible, consider a complete reformat/reinstall.

Can you describe your current setup? You have a XenServer and a SBS 2008?

I'm curious. What motivated you to go with XenServer instead of Hyper-V or ESXi?

I would be very interested in seeing what the event logs say.

JamesNT

@Kevin

You should be able to turn the update notices off.

In replay to Sandeep, Citrix has a very slick management console - it made things a lot easier to understand and setup. Otherwise the capabilities of the free hypervisors were very similar, also if I decided to pay for a license, Citrix was less expensive at the time. Citrix also had long extablished interfaces to thin clients, though I wound up using MS RDP since I still didn't want to pay for anything.

The Xenserver (which is a Core I7 980) runs 8 Windows XP virtual PCs and a standard Windows 2008 Server R1 which hosts Amazing Charts and MS SQL 2005. My SBS server is a stand alone dual Xeon 5405 2 Ghz with 8Gb RAM. I didn't virtualize it because it also has the fax board. Next build will make the SBS server a virtual device and the fax board might be moved to another PC. We're using 6 thin clients and 3 real PCs for exam rooms and front office. My office computer is a thin client.

Why the dual Xeon 5405s on SBS instead of the terminal server running 9 virtual machines? I would've probably switched it around. Also, put more RAM in the SBS server. TBH, SBS really needs a minimum of 12, with a recommended of 16GB. Another thing about the terminal server, isn't cheaper and less resource intensive to just use a terminal server with RDS licensing. I believe XP licenses are more expensive than an RDS CALs. Also kinda defeats the point of a Terminal Server with shared resources when you're running six virtual machines that are using separate resources.

Info Overload Below (Read only if you're bored.)
Maybe on the next one. Get a dual LGA 2011 motherboard with two E5-2620 (12 Physical, 24 Logical Cores) or two E5-2650 (16 Physical, 32 Logical Cores). There's a $1600 price difference between the two. I'm pretty sure the 6 cores would be more than enough. 10 Logical Cores to SBS 2011 and 14 to the Terminal Server.

Server 2008R2+SBS 2011 with the 1+1 licensing you can install a Server 2008R2 base and add the Hyper V role and add the SBS 2011 and Server 2008R2 as guests. I know you like XenServer, but I think HyperV and ESXi have more to offer. I opt for Hyper V for the simple reason that it interfaces well with BackupAssist.

32GB of RAM or 48GB. Probably 16 for SBS and 16 for the Terminal Server. 32GB will run you about $250. You can easily add more since there are 16 RAM slots on these mobos. If you want super speed, run a RAID 10 of 128GB SSDs. 256GB to the guest Operating System, Terminal Server, and your AC Database. I'm suggesting RAID 10 over RAID 1 not for speed but for the greater redundancy and that SSD price is essentially linear. A 128GB costs nearly half as much as a 256GB drive so why not just get even more performance. Your thin clients will run much faster. Give about 120-140GB to SBS, the rest to the terminal server and AC. Use SBS wizards to move user data to the second array of storage drives.

Keep your data on a set of RAID 10 500GB RE4 drives which will give a 1TB usable capacity for data storage. Most offices don't exceed 100GB between all of their computers. Enable folder redirection so all of the user data will sit on the second 1TB array. Make sure you get one of those 8 Port RAID Cards with SATA 6.0 GBPS ports.

The way I figure it you could use something like 6 or 8 Seagate SAS drives that will cost you $500-1000 more than the SSD+HDD setup mentioned above. Or you could use 8 WD RE4 drives in a single RAID 10 or two RAID 10 arrays. The price would be the same, but the capacity would be double. But like I said, most offices don't exceed 100GB between all of their computers and they would be worlds apart in terms of speed.

Another side note about the network. Since your Terminal Server and SBS installation would be on the same box, it'll be passing through the internal network with virtually no lag. I highly doubt you'll find a major OEM that can do this build since most of them haven't even caught on to the LGA 2011 socket. They would also murder your wallet. Probably charge you double or triple the actual cost of the hardware.

The server I'm specifying here could feasibly run 30-50 users.

I'm probably going to go the direction of SBS2011. I'll have to look into the MS hypervisor and desktop solutions. The reason why my small business server is on the dual Xeon 5405 is that the Core i7 980 is a lot faster and has the equivalent of 12 cores. It actually replaced another dual 5405 server that had less disk capacity. Testing speed to the database with Amazing Charts Utilities, it improved from an average of 0.6s to 0.2s

Also, note the newer Core i7 980 is near equivalent to the newer Xeon chips we'd like to try. The difference is ECC memory, ability to use in a multi-CPU socket system, and a few other odds and ends that are more important to super computing but don't really help us standard users.

That's true. The 5405 is a little on the weak side. I actually thought 54 series had hyperthreading, but it doesn't. It's the 55 series that has it. (Hard to remember with all the different Xeon models out there.) 4 Cores/4Threads for one with a net 8 cores/8 threads for both. It's not surprising that the 6 core/12 thread was better lol. Also, had a higher clock speed.
It's another possibility that the speed went up because you changed the hard drives. Newer hard drives are faster. Furthermore larger disks have higher data density. Think of it like a CD vs DVD. Both the same physical size, but the dvd encodes a lot more data in that same space. It can read and write larger "chunks" at a time. It happens with hard drives all the time. The sequential write speeds of a 10,000 RPM 300GB drive is not that far off from a 1TB or 2TB drive spinning at 5,400RPM. Higher data density compensates for the lower rotational speed.
Or the NIC is better on the new board. Lots of possibilities. It's 2/5's of a second faster ha.


The exact things that make it more expensive ha. ECC RAM+multi-CPU ability. The one I mentioned is like you said about the same except with all the features. About equivalent to a i7-3930K (slower clock speed though). All server processors have lower clock speeds to ensure reliability. For you it does matter, especially if you plan to virtualize 2 resource-hungry operating systems with a single machine. You're kind of are super computing with virtualization. I wouldn't want SBS and a terminal server to run on one 6 core processor ha. At the moment, $400 per E5-2620 is a pretty good deal. $800 bucks and you got 24 threads to play with between SBS and your terminal server. Definitely reasonable. The i7-980 is about 600 bucks so the E5-2620 would be my pick. Or you can always get two E5-2609s (dual quad cores, net 8 cores, 16 threads.)

Just saves you a good bit of money when you don't have to buy 2 motherboards, 2 power supplies, etc.

KEVIN,

That event log looks pretty bad. Any chance you can dump the entire log out to a file and send it to me?

JamesNT

That looks really bad. I'm not even sure it'd be worth fixing all of the errors.
Does your SharePoint work?
Does your Exchange/Outlook work?
Doesn't look like it's communicating with Active Directory either.

Geez, dump on my event log will you! Actually, it all works. Lately, seems to be working better. I've been working on the exchange error and that seems to be better - all the self signed certificates are renewed. But exchange never stopped working or even hiccupped. I'll e-mail the current report.

Don't worry Kevin. Looks better than mine. I'd have to have a daily MVP log in to keep all the errors off. I gave up a long time ago. I chip away at it.

I don't have errors at the moment, but I am missing updates. There's a new version of Microsoft Security Essentials that was released yesterday.